Ever since I have been old enough to fantasize about Ted Danson as Sam from Cheers inviting me into his backroom for some afternoon delight (so like, since first grade), I have longed to meet a man who turns me on, challenges me, and who will go to musicals with me if I beg him too.

That's why coming up on the one-year mark with the first man who seems like he might have what it takes to not cut and run has me feeling kind of reflective.

I love my boyfriend. In many ways (minus the whole him being a polyamorist thing) he is the man I dreamed of when I was a little girl. He loves spending time together, and if our respective schedules allowed it, I'm sure he would be quite content to be with me every waking hour of every day. In fact, my need for time to myself has been a hurdle that we've both had to make compromises to leap over without knee-capping ourselves.

All of that ushy-gushy stuff said, here's the hard truth: I might love him an awful lot, but damn if I don't miss being single.

When I talk about being single, I don't mean being lonely. Neither do I mean "being single" as a kind of shorthand for being sexually open in the hopes of snaring a partner. You know, the kind of "single" you see women being on TV or inside of garish and dark clubs, women wearing not enough clothes and hungry desperate expressions.

As a single person, I spent a lot of time on my own. When I think about being single, I remember a lot of long aimless walks, a lot of time at the gym, a lot of nights in crafting (I know, but I love to craft) watching scary movies and ordering in pizza. When I think of being single I think of endless happy hours with friends who I don't see enough now. I think of single me, and I often feel like I'm looking back on a past that I will never capture again, and that leaves a pit inside my stomach.

The thing is, I think it's normal.

I think when we make room in our lives for other people, it's natural that your calendar fills up. It's natural that you start KEEPING a calendar. When you let love into your life, you're also letting in a sort of permanent appointment you have to be constantly aware of and work around.

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I guess what I'm saying is that you can't be as selfish as you used to be, and while the trade-off is love and a relationship that can knock you over with its strength, it's normal to miss those selfish, silly little nights where all you had on the books was a box of brownie batter that needed cooking.

Letting love into your life means letting a whole other person into your life, which means accepting the give and take that comes with that person and the whole world they are bringing into the relationship with them. It doesn't mean you can't pine for the days where your deepest relationship was with a pair of pajama pants, but it does mean accepting that your life, has changed and that change, no matter how good, can always unmoor us and leave us feeling uncertain.

But that's what life is about — feeling completely uncertain! If you always felt confident and positive and rooted in every single decision you made, you would be a very nice robot, but not at all a human being. Love is one more of those things that force us to remember how dynamic we must be as human beings, and it's okay to feel that.

Hell, that's the luxury of a love that lasts anyway, you CAN feel that sense of nostalgia for the security of your old life because the love you've found has transformed even your memories of the past.

Because let's be real, staying home and crafting is FINE, but it's like, not something to write home about, amiright?